Abstract

The Protein Information Management System (PiMS) is a well developed tool for following the molecular biology steps from construct design through to purified protein. xtalPiMS, built on PiMS, is a tool for managing crystallization experiments, and in particular the large numbers of images that can be produced by automated imaging systems. Like PiMS, xtalPiMS is a web-based application that runs on widely-available open source software; xtalPiMS is accessed using a web browser, typically requiring no additional software to be installed on the client. Current work on xtalPiMS aims to close the toolchain gap between the crystallization image of interest in xtalPiMS and the shipment of the crystal to the synchrotron with ISPyB, by providing a highly customizable and flexible method for recording crystal treatments. This work will provide a continuous record chain from protein sequence to X-ray diffraction images. xtalPiMS is available under the same terms as PiMS. To try xtalPiMS, visit http://pimstrak1.dl.ac.uk:8080/xtal/loginhome.jsp (user name "demo", password "demo").